The Further
by Echo312
Summary: In this spin-off from the film, the U.S. military has developed an interest in Astral Projection.


The Further. That place lurking in the abyssal trenches of the Astral Plane. Where legions of inhuman souls prowl the barren and scarred wasteland that lies cloaked in shadow and mist. As it has for an eternity that cannot be measured in seconds or years, a place where waking dreams flounder and die and are doomed to be smothered into nothingness by the irrational madness that scatters the land.

James Fischer, age eight, walks through the mist. He is cold. His feet shuffle through grainy dust. He cannot see a mere three feet ahead of him. He hears only the sound of his bare feet crunching on the ashen ground. He sees his breath rise in the chill air, only to mingle with the grey vapor that surrounds him, seeping into the thin fabric of his pajamas as he stumbles onward, unaware that he walks not through a dreamland, but through a forsaken expanse of lunar territory that threatens to consume his mind, his body as it lies immobile in his small bed in his parents' farmhouse in Easton, Pennsylvania.

James is a traveler. An explorer of the Astral Plane, unaware that his dreams are voyages—very real voyages—that carry his mind and defy the known laws of quantum physics to allow him to venture into a different realm of reality even as he lies asleep in the physical, material world familiar to us.

He stumbles onward through the mist. It has an odd, musty smell to it. As if it rose cold from somewhere wet and dark, where water seeps down scarred rock faces and minor horrors scuttle in the shadow and the fog. In the twilight that marks neither the coming of the night nor the day, a vast and dark shape looms before him. A dark plane that stands before his face. He reaches his hands out to touch it.

It is a wall.

His hands feel old and beaten stone scarred with sickly green moss. As his hands explore this rough-hewn rock face, they find old and gnarled veins that run up its length like pythons frozen mid-slither.

He looks up. The dark stone rises into the mist, its top obscured by the roiling fog. Slowly, gingerly, he paces to the side, one hand tracing the old stone wall. It takes him a long time to trace the perimeter. The structure is hexagonal, with a single set of weathered stone steps, scalloped by footsteps made by unknown beings. The stone steps lead to a heavy oak door secured by rusty iron fittings. He walks up the steps now, ascending towards the mouth of the structure.

He has seen structures like this before.

He saw one like it on the afternoon of his grandfather's funeral. The rain pattering against the umbrellas of the huddled relatives that had gathered on that day. The priest with the tattered bible. The sight of the coffin as it descended into the moist earth.

It was a mausoleum. A place where families are locked in death, such that their corpses may remain close to each other in their decaying sleep. He was walking into this one, now.

He hesitates as he nears the top. "It's only a dream," he tells himself. "Nothing can hurt me."

He places his hand on the damp wooden door. He expects that it will not budge, but the door shudders at his touch. The iron hinges squeal as flakes of maroon rust fall from them. A second-long pause. The doors swing open, slowly, laboriously.

James enters the small space. At first he is surprised by the surroundings. The floor is made of wooden planks, upon which sit antique carpets. The inside of the mausoleum is lit by a warm glow that shines forth from stained-glass lamps. In one corner of the room, an old harpsichord plays by itself, the ivory keys immobile even though the strings hum with music. On the walls of the room are paintings mounted in gilded frames. The heads of deer, elk, moose and wolf are mounted as hunting trophies on the mahogany-paneled walls.

In the far, far corner of the room, flanked by two shiny suits of armor, sits a heavy armoire made of solid oak. It gleams dully in the feeble light.

James steps towards the armoire. The music fills the air with its thin, high notes as he approaches. He hears the floorboards creek beneath his bare feet. The music seems to become more faster, more shrill as he approaches the gleaming doors.

He reaches his hand out to touch the intricate carvings on the armoire doors.

Before he can touch them, they swing open.

James cannot find the breath the scream. All that escapes his mouth is a strangled, saliva-laden gurgle. His eyes bulge wide.

The thing in the armoire has the body of a skinned goat, mere shreds of fur remaining on an otherwise hairless body that has been flayed pink by a nameless butcher's blade. Its arms and hands are the gnarled limbs of an old man, sun spots dotting wrinkled skin. Beneath the skin, pale bones and green-grey veins.

Its face. Its face.

The thing had the shrunken face of a mummy, the skin a dried and rotting parchment. The gaping mouth was a hole from which jutted yellowing, cavity-laden teeth locked in a yawning grimace. There was no hole or demarcation for where a nose should be, but the yellow and jaundiced eyes stared forth, into James' soul, rimmed with blood-red capillaries. In the center of each eye was a coal-black pit that seemed to burn with the primeval, animal fire of a Grey Wolf who had found its quarry after a long hunt. A pair of antelope horns crowned the head, topped with wisps of foul white hair, and scraped the top of the armoire's interior.

James stumbled backwards. Behind him, he heard the oak doors of the mausoleum slam shut.

"Wake up," he told himself. "Wake up."

The thing stirred. Its eyes locked on James, a cloven hoof arched out of the armoire and scraped the floor.

James thought, "Wake up. Why am I not waking up?"

Both hooves now on the floor.

The thing took a step towards James. The yellow eyes leered. A yawning howl escaped the shrunken mummy face, the circular hole where the jaws should be, and James knew that the last thing he would smell was the carrion, maggot-laden breath on his neck as the thing tore into him, possessed him. This he knew.

The room shook when the doors were forced inwards. James turned to see the shadowy figures standing just outside the door, on the stairs, the mist seeping slowly into the mausoleum. One of the shadows tossed a heavy metal object into the room. It landed on the wooden floor with a dull thud, and a second later it exploded with an impossibly loud clap of smoke and sparks.

In the seconds after the flash-bang exploded, James' world was turned upside down, and he felt the floor smack into his chest as he fell to meet it.

He heard the chatter of automatic weapon fire, the sound of bullets ejected from their casings and landing hot onto the floor. He covered his ears with the palms of his hands and finally screamed. He smelled gunpowder and cordite, heard boots against the floor approaching him. He cowered, in a fetal position, on the floorboards.

A gloved hand reached out and touched his shoulder. A voice said, "It's okay. You're okay, son. It's over now. We'll get you out of here."

James opened his eyes. He looked into a bearded face obscured by a pair of black night vision goggles. One of the man's hands reached up to his face to push the goggles upwards. The man's brown eyes looked at him intently, but they were kind.

James said, "Who are you? This is not a dream. This doesn't feel like a dream." He started to cry, his face crumpled in confusion.

James could see other men, wearing dark combat uniforms, circling the room. They carried M-4 carbines equipped with ruby-red laser sights that played over the mahogany walls. They looked bulky and robotic, wholly out of place in this antique mausoleum.

The man said, "My name is Lieutenant Colonel Michael Baker. This is my team. We work for the U.S. Navy. We're here to get you out of here. I will explain when we're somewhere safe, but I need you to focus now."

James looked around the room in confusion. One of the soldiers prodded the demon's carcass with a booted foot. The thing did not stir. James saw two jagged bullet holes leaking pink-red blood between the thing's eyes, now dimmed from their fire in death.

He said, to nobody in particular, "What is this? What's going on?"


End file.
